Growing Up Swedish

Growing Up Swedish
ERIC V. YOUNGQUIST
Except for the accident of geography, being born in America, I
was as Swedish as you could get. Both my parents were descen­dants
of families with many generations of nothing but Swedes,
and they were already adults when they arrived in this country. M y
last name shouted out Swedish, and the middle name I used until I
started college, Vikar, would also have been recognizable as Scandi­navian
if people had pronounced it the Swedish way (i.e., rhyming
with S e a C a r , with a little trill to the r) instead of making it rhyme
with biker or sicker! The only thing that name had going for it was
that it was unusual enough that people seemed to remember it.
I came into this world with a full dose of Swedish genes. In
among those genes there must be one that dictates how Swedes
behave. They tend to obey society's rules, and expect everyone else
to do the same. They have a reserve (more noticeable in the cities)
that makes them appear rigid and aloof, because for centuries they
have been taught not to show feelings to strangers. In that narrow
sense they are quintessential stoics. Swedes may not make friends
quickly, but once you have one for a friend, he or she is a true one;
they may be a tad crusty on the outside, but once you become their
friend you experience the mushy, sentimental inside. That's why they
are careful about offering friendship: they believe that it has to be
genuine on both sides. Swedes also tend to be formal, with the
"right" way to do things like propose a toast, for example.
My parents came to this country for the oldest of reasons: America
ERIC V. YOUNGQUIST has studied in and about Scandinavia, worked for the
Department of State, taught, practiced law in several settings, and served as a VISTA
volunteer. Today he is retired and lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where he is completing
a series of stories about his childhood. He also compiled, edited, and published his
father's immigrant reminiscences in America Fever: A Swede in the West, 1914-
1923 (Nashville, 1 9 8 8 ).
237
was the land of opportu­nity.
Swedish society in the
early years of the twenti­eth
century was still rigid
and class-bound; descen­dants
of the old noble fami­lies
still ruled. Even their
surnames, which were reg­istered
and reeked of in­herited
wealth and power,
set them apart. Farmers
and ordinary workers, for
the most part, had no sur­names
until the wave of de­mocracy
reached Scan­dinavia
in the late nine­teenth
century. For centu­ries
they had had to use
the patronymic system. So,
for example, if Bengt had
a son U l f and a daughter
Ingrid, the son would be called U l f Bengtsson and the daughter
Ingrid Bengtsdotter. Everyone knew who the important people were;
their very names proclaimed their status and their titles reinforced it.
Titles were important until well after World War II. When I traveled
to Gothenburg to visit my aunt in 1952, I had trouble finding her
husband's name in the phone book. The Johanssons were not listed
alphabetically by first names, but by titles, or occupations.
My father told us that he was about five years old when his family
chose its surname, and he remembered when the discussion took
place. The family decided to take its name from the name of the
family farm, which was Ljungagård (Heather Acres). They chose a
variant, however, Ljungkvist, or Heather-twig. Otherwise his name
would have been Erick Klausson, because his father was named Klaus
August Svensson. My father Americanized the spelling of his sur­name
when he became a citizen.
Attracted by the lure of the old West, my father left for America
Fig. 1. T h e author in HIS c h i l d h o o d — a stereotypi­cal
tow-headed, blue-eyed S w e d i s h - A m e r i c a n kid.
238
in 1914 to find out what it was like to be a cowboy, and he decided
to stay here because in this country he felt freed from chains of the
past. He didn't have to be classified by what his parents were; he
discovered he could carve his own future. He learned the skills
necessary to hold his own with other "cowpunchers" through a series
of jobs on ranches in Nebraska, Wyoming, Oregon, and Idaho. Then
he enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War I. He was accepted
even though he was not a citizen and was assigned to the noncomba¬
tant Engineer Corps. He served in France and was stationed near the
front lines most of the time, helping to gather timber for trenches and
shelters. Near the end of the war, during the 1918 influenza pan­demic,
he fell i l l and was unable to return to the United States until
the following year.
After the war, he and Cecil Fallon, one of his Army buddies,
decided to head west together and scout around for good home-steading
land. After traveling all through the eastern half of Oregon
and finding nothing with sufficient water, they turned their efforts
toward Montana. In the fall of 1919 they finally staked squatter
claims in southwest Mon­tana,
not far from
Yellowstone Park. About
this time, he also decided
that he would get nowhere
in America without more
education. Since he had
nothing but free time at
least seven months a year,
he wanted to spend that
time reading and learning
as much as he could. He
went to the teachers col­lege
in Dillon and asked the
head librarian what books
he should read to make up
for his lack of formal edu­cation.
Impressed by his
F i g . 2 . M y father in his homesteading days. desire to learn, she made
239
up a list of textbooks that would
help him. He read history (Ameri­can,
Roman, English, Egyptian), ge­ology,
chemistry, physics, as­tronomy,
mathematics, and phi­losophy.
One of the local stores had
used textbooks, and for twenty
dollars my father bought everything
he needed, including a dictionary.
He would read for a few hours, he
told me, and then have to get some
exercise, so he would take a fif­teen-
or twenty-minute break to
run around his cabin, jumping into
the air and yelling. After staying
on his claim and "proving up" on
it for the required three years when
the area was officially opened to
homesteading, my father ended up
with 640 acres of his own.
My mother, already linked
with my father through the mar­riage
of her oldest sister to my father's older brother, came to America
partly for love and partly to escape her own chains. She often told us
that the saddest day of her life was when she was told that she had to
go to work as a mother's helper and could not return to school. She
was only eleven at the time.
My parents' romance had a long gestation period. He was smit­ten
by her early, and often told us how cute she was and how fast she
could run as a youngster. In Sweden he had watched her play games
like Capture the Flag. The photo in figure 3 shows how he remem­bered
her during the years they were apart. Mother would not have
been much more than fourteen when my father left Sweden, so when
he went home in 1923 and proposed to her, they had not seen one
another for about nine years and she had blossomed into a beautiful
woman. They became engaged just before he returned to the United
States.
Fig. 3. T h e earliest picture we have of
my m o t h e r . She was sixteen when this
was t a k e n . It is probably the one my
father carried and fell i n love with.
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Mother's first big decision about marriage, other than agreeing to
wed, had a lasting effect for our family. When she and my father
discussed where they ought to live in America, she quickly put an
end to any idea he might have had about living on his homestead in
Montana. No "cabin in the mountains" for her, without another
woman around for miles and nothing but work. She had heard enough
about pioneer women from my father to realize that kind of life
would be no liberation for her. She was tired of facing a future with
nothing but work, and no hope. There was nothing attractive about
scenery without security; she wanted to settle down and build a life.
My father told her that living and economic conditions were
improving most rapidly in California and Michigan, so they tried to
decide which state would be better. Michigan won out. My father
headed for Dearborn, home of Henry Ford and the huge River Rouge
plant. When he arrived in Dearborn to start building a life for his
future wife and himself, he had no idea how he was going to support
the two of them, let alone a family. He had only worked on ranches
and his own homestead, and he had never seen the inside of a
factory. None of this discouraged him, however. He started out by
applying for work at Ford's. [Living in Dearborn in my day was living
with Ford's. For us, Ford's was a generic, all-encompassing term that
stood for Henry Ford's company and everything connected with it.
People didn't work for the Ford Motor Company; they worked at
Ford's.] He stood in a line outside the company's employment office,
and when his turn came he handed his application to the employ­ment
clerk at the counter, who looked it over carefully. From the
application the clerk could see that my father was a veteran, and
from my father's appearance he could see that my father was strong
and looked eager to work.
He looked down at the application and asked my father, "Had
any experience with machines?"
My father figured that yes would be the right answer, and said it
without waiting.
The clerk looked up, his pen raised. "What kind of machines?"
My father's heart skipped a beat. T r a p p e d . He had to come up
with an answer, so he did. It was not the one the examiner expected.
"Mowing machines."
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With a laugh, the man
said, "Okay, you're hired."
My father began regu­lar
shift work at the giant
plant, but he had visions
of a better future, so he
kept his eyes open for other
opportunities, too. When
he learned that the city
police department was ex­panding
and looking for
patrolmen, he went to the
police station to ask for
more information. He met
and spoke with Joseph
Shaefer, the police chief,
who encouraged him to
put in an application.
When it was accepted in
mid-year 1924, my father
became a uniformed patrol­man
and started on his
twenty-year career in law enforcement.
As soon as he had his first job, my father bought a lot and began
building a home for his intended. He had built sheds in the Army
and his cabin when he lived in Montana, but a home in Dearborn
was a new departure. Lack of experience didn't deter him, however.
He knew enough to measure carefully before sawing and to keep
everything level and plumb. A home was being built across the street
from him, so he watched and learned. He told us that after the
workmen left in the afternoon, he would amble over and take mea­surements
of things he was working on, e.g., the rough openings for
windows and doors.
When their new home was ready and furnished (he bought furni­ture
"on time'"), he sent Mother a telegram saying, in effect, "Come
on over"—which she did. She arrived by ship in early January 1924,
together with her brother, Gunnar. She came to America with prac-
F i g . 4 . Father as a p a t r o l m a n .
242
tically nothing except her clothing and some personal things like bits
of copperware. No large, handmade trousseau trunk, and precious
little of Sweden except memories. They were married immediately
and moved into their new house.
In addition to myself, the family included my two sisters, Irene
and Mae. Irene was born eleven months after my parents were mar­ried.
I came along four years later, and it took another four years
before Mae arrived. In our view, it was as if the three of us were in
different generations. Because they were girls as well, our friends, our
games, and our interests were completely different. I know that when
I was around Irene, she considered me a pest, and I resented that she
considered herself my boss. When Mae was around me she enjoyed
pestering me, and she probably felt that she was being bossed by
everyone.
My parents felt at home in Dearborn because it was a melting
pot. They were literally surrounded by other immigrants. Just in the
half-block where we lived there were families whose parents had
come from Scotland, Poland, Germany, England, Sweden, Ireland,
Finland, and Italy. My stories could have been repeated by many of
my friends. Though their experiences might have been greatly differ­ent
from mine, I believe a lot of what I have written would resonate
with them. My Swedish heritage lent a special flavor to my youth,
but my friend Johnny Golles could have written the same thing
about G r o w i n g U p Italian. He probably felt as close to his parents'
language and traditions as I did—maybe even closer. When a young
Italian boy joined our second-grade class, the teacher had him sit
next to Johnny because she knew that Johnny would help h im through
the difficulties of getting adjusted to school and to a new language.
* * *
Swedish food was an integral part of my growing-up years, par­ticularly
the different kinds of coffee bread, cinnamon rolls, cookies,
and other baked goods that went so well with coffee. For our family,
however, no single food reminded us of Sweden so much as s v e n s ka
p a n k a k o r — t h e light, egg-rich, sweet pancakes that our mother could
make so well. Regular pancakes simply didn't give us anything like
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the satisfaction that hers did.
Swedish pancakes were part of many happy family memories.
Almost any weekend when the weather was nice we might drive to
River Rouge Park for a morning picnic. We took our picnic basket
and supplies out of the car, found a picnic table in a wooded area
and organized everything while Dad built a cooking fire in the nearby
grill. Then we kids would run around in the woods. Mother's batter
was already prepared, so it was not long before she would call us to
the table and the pancakes would begin arriving, one every couple
minutes—even faster if she was using two skillets. Usually we poured
maple syrup on our pancakes unless Mother had made pear syrup,
which was absolutely the best topping. Any kind of jam or jelly also
worked if we had nothing else.
During my first semesters at [the University of] Michigan, my
parents sometimes drove over to A n n Arbor on a Saturday to see
me. Knowing that I was probably going through pancake withdrawal,
they usually brought along a stack of pancakes that Mother had
made, kept warm in a deep skillet wrapped in a heavy towel and
several layers of newspapers. We would find a quiet place to park
and then sit there together in the car, talking and enjoying our
morning treat.
Mother had no recipe for pancakes; she never measured ingredi­ents.
She just broke one egg for each person into a bowl, poured in
the right amount of milk, beat them together with her visp (a bundle
of birch twigs, I think), then added some sugar, flour, and a little salt.
She relied wholly on color and texture; she knew intuitively when
the batter was right. Since she did not work from a recipe, she could
not tell her daughters or my wife how to make pancakes like hers.
Eventually my wife arranged to be with her while she prepared the
batter. Rita weighed carefully every ingredient that my mother put in
and wrote down the list together with a description of the entire
process. That ensured the continuity of the Youngquist Swedish pan­cake
tradition.
When my mother came to America she did bring along a recipe
box from her father, but aside from her Swedish specialties, cooking
was a continuing adventure—for her as well as us. In America she
was confronted by a bewildering variety of foods and ingredients that
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were unfamiliar to her, so her early cooking years were a time of
experimentation, trial, and error. She took a cooking class that came
free along with her new stove, picked up new recipes from other
women in the neighborhood, of course, and clipped some from food
containers.
There were times when we children felt like guinea pigs for new
dishes. Stuffed green peppers were a memorable flop. Mother used a
salty concoction for filling that was mostly ham, I believe, but cer­tainly
not the usual ground beef and rice. Whatever it was, I hated
the taste and couldn't finish mine, so the half-opened pepper sat
there on my plate staring at me. My younger sister, Mae, obviously
felt the same. My father—without even tasting the pepper—decreed
that personal preferences were irrelevant; we had been served and we
could not leave the table until we had finished. He didn't rely on any
"starving children in China" reasoning. His approach was direct and
unequivocal: Eat it. Mother took pity on us, though, and after my
father had gone upstairs she quietly said that if we took one more
bite it was O K for us to leave.
Mother prepared other trial dishes that I had troubles with, nota­bly
creamed Swiss chard, mashed rutabaga, and rhubarb (in any
form). My father loved them all, so they showed up fairly often on
our table. I gagged on them, though, and had to devise ways of
avoiding them, or at least limiting my losses. I would take my plate
and try to fill it with other food, but rarely managed to escape
without having a serving of the loathsome stuff added. The next line
of defense was to plead that I was not really hungry and wanted only
a little bit. That sometimes worked. If all else failed and I wound up
with some of the dreaded food on my plate, I tried to cover it with
other things, like peelings from new potatoes or a half-slice of bread.
When I did take a bite, it would be small. The final defense was
delay. If I could wait out everyone, I might be able to toss the
uneaten stuff in the garbage while my mother was washing dishes.
Overall, I would say that—using a major-league batting average for
comparison—I batted about .250 (i.e., not great) on rutabaga, rhu­barb,
and Swiss chard avoidance.
We played a lot of games to entertain ourselves, and my mother
and Uncle Thor particularly enjoyed card games. When we got to-
245
gether with other Swedes the adults sometimes played Priffe, or Swedish
whist; these games were always accompanied by spirited conversa­tion
in Swedish. The other game we all enjoyed was pinochle—not
two-deck or four-deck, just single-deck, without frills. The only con­cession
we made to silliness was crazy pinochle, where the side that
won the bid could exchange three cards before play began. When
my parents went to visit Swedish friends, we generally visited as a
family; after dinner the adults conversed in Swedish and played cards
while we children were left to amuse ourselves.
* * *
My parents would have been surprised if they had heard me say
that I grew up Swedish. They took great pains to become complete
Americans. They worked hard to learn English and adapt to Ameri­can
ways. A t the same time, however, their mother tongue, their
traditions, their families, and many of their friends were Swedish, so it
is not surprising that we children were acutely aware of our Swedish
roots. We also had constant reminders of Sweden, such as special
foods and holidays, letters and cards from relatives in Sweden, con­tact
with The Boys, activities at the Vasa Club, and of course the
language itself.
THE BOYS
"The Boys" were one of our important links with Sweden. They
were all young Swedes who were out of work and needed a place to
stay. One half of our garage was for parking our Model A and the
other half was made into a large room. This is where The Boys lived.
In retrospect, their room must have been a lot like a ranch bunk-house:
four beds against the walls, a stove, and one dresser against
the wall opposite the outer door. There wasn't much insulation in the
walls, so the room must have been really chilly during winter nights.
There might have been three or four rooming in our garage at
any one time. I wasn't old enough to be curious about what they did
or how they lived. To me, The Boys were just part of our family, in a
way.
246
They were there in the garage, and they came and they went.
Work was hard to find during the Depression, so they worked when
they could find jobs, sometimes at Ford, but usually in general con­struction
or painting homes or buildings. This was before rollers put
most professional painters pretty much out of business. They were a
fun-loving lot, and I must have heard a lot of Swedish—generally
swear words—from them. They'd all come over from Sweden, and
most were relatives. In addition to those pictured below, there were
Carl and Arvid, my father's brothers (they had left before I was
born); and Sven and Helge, who were distant cousins. Two others,
Clas and Algot, were just young Swedes who were friends of the
other Boys. Carl and Gunnar eventually returned to Sweden and
Arvid settled in Nebraska, but the others stayed on.
Even after The Boys married and had homes of their own, they
F i g . 5. Family gathering. Three of T h e Boys are i n the back r o w . T h e shorter ones,
G u n n a r ( L ) a n d T h o r ( R ) , are m y mother's brothers; the tall one is O s c a r , my double
c o u s i n — h i s parents were my mother's oldest sister a n d m y father's older brother. I n the
front r o w are E r i c (the a u t h o r ) , M o m , her father, Irene, a n d D a d .
247
still felt like part of our family, and they were regular guests at our
Christmas Eve parties.
The most colorful character among The Boys was Helge. He was
a loud, bluff person, not reserved and quiet like the others. He was
also volatile, which was unusual for a Swede, and could easily ex­plode
in bursts of profanity. He left me with two indelible memories.
One day I must have stretched his patience to the breaking point by
asking for some of what he was drinking, because he took his bottle
of beer and poured it over my head. That had a lasting effect all
right, because from that day forward I disliked the taste—and even
the smell—of beer.
The second Helge incident involved the dog that our renters
upstairs kept, a Spitz with a high-pitched bark that grated on everyone's
nerves, particularly Helge's. He disliked den jävla h u n d (that damned
dog) with a passion. One day he was backing out our driveway and
didn't know that the Spitz was on the front porch waiting for him, or
that when he passed the porch his head would be less than two feet
away from where the dog was standing. He stuck his head out the car
window, looked down the driveway and started backing up. As he
passed the porch, the Spitz put its head through the railing and let
out a series of loud yips right in Helge's ear. The entire neighborhood
must have heard Helge explode with an epic stream of Swedish
swearwords. The incident became part of our family lore.
Uncle Thor (we called him Tore, pronounced too-reh) was my
mother's younger brother. Always easy-going and nonjudgmental,
with a hint of a smile on his face, he was a favorite with children,
particularly my sisters and me and our own children, probably be­cause
he was like a kindly grandparent. He rarely contradicted any­one,
and would venture an opinion on a matter only if asked. If he
disagreed with what a person said, he would nod silently as if think­ing
about it, and maybe say something like "Ja, I can see that." He
also had an uncanny rapport with animals. When our cocker spaniel,
Sniffles, was old and almost blind, she would stay with him as much
as she could. She would lie down by his feet or crawl into bed with
him. If he went outside, she would sniff around his room to find a
piece of his clothing and stretch out on it. One day when I passed by
her, she was in a chair, lying on top of Thor's knitted cap. She eyed
248
me suspiciously as I came near. When I reached out to pet her, she
growled and rippled her lips at me as if to say, Don't y o u e v e n think of
t o u c h i n g this cap!
One day when we lived in Dixboro my mother looked out the
window and saw Thor walking away from our barn out into the field.
Strung out behind him, like the kids who followed the Pied Piper,
were our horse Molly, our cow Bangs, two pigs that had escaped their
pen, and Sniffles. When Thor stopped to read or lie down, the
animals would stay near him, keeping him company.
I probably had more contact with Thor than my sisters did,
because I was interested in baseball and he liked to watch the Detroit
Tigers play. We would ride a streetcar to Navin Field and generally
sit in the grandstand close to third base. I liked that section because
I always hoped to catch a foul ball (which I never did), and I could
also walk over to stand in the aisle where I was right behind home
plate and could get a batter's view of incoming pitches.
Thor was a regular player in our family pinochle games. When he
lived with my folks, the three of them often played three-handed
cut-throat. Whenever I was home, the four of us played partners or
four-handed cut-throat. I believe that card sense ran in my mother's
family, because Thor and Mother were always tough to beat. You
always wanted one of them for your partner. Dad was more easy­going
about cards and never quite as sharp as those two. When they
began spending winters near Clearwater, Florida, I stopped in for a
few days on business trips. We would play marathon sessions of cut­throat
pinochle.
Thor was a journeyman painter. He kept painting even after
rollers were introduced. The low point came when he realized that
he was the only painter working for his company, and he alone was
supporting an office staff of three people. That was when he decided
to quit painting as a regular job. From then on he only did contract
painting: people or businesses who were familiar with his work would
call to ask him to do special jobs.
He was a part of our household and lived with my parents for
many years. In Dearborn he lived with us fairly regularly, usually in
the garage, until World War II, except for a time when he hitch­hiked
or bummed his way west and stayed there for about a year. As
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the months passed with no word from him, the whole family grew
concerned. Then one day he suddenly appeared, without notice and
without much explanation of where he had been or what he had
done. That was Uncle Thor, a free spirit and a kind of loner.
On our farm in Dixboro, Thor had his own room. When we sold
the house at the farm, along with part of the acreage, my parents
built a smaller one in the corner of the land they kept. While they
were staying there during the spring and summer, he lived in one of
the outbuildings. He helped with clean-up and did a lot of gardening
and other outside work. As I said, he was family and a constant
presence.
Thor was an inveterate gambler and would bet on almost any­thing.
A n d he rarely lost. Whenever he and I bet on which of two
teams would win, he would tell me to take my pick. We never bet
much—just enough so the winner could gloat a bit. Other memories:
doing crossword puzzles with him, going to buy a carton of cigarettes
for him, and the fact that he never learned—or wanted to learn—
how to drive.
Thor followed the horses, and that led to gambling by my par­ents—
not a good result, even though they enjoyed the camaraderie
of going to the track. Neither of them had showed any interest in
gambling while we were young. Going to the race track would have
been unthinkable while my father was in the Police Department. It
was not until after he took early retirement in 1944 that they started
following the horses. My theory about why my father thought he
could win by betting on horse racing is this: he figured that he knew
horses, based on his years as a cowhand, and that, therefore, he could
"beat the system." The problem was that his arrogance, if I can call it
that, led him to bet more than he could afford to lose, while my
mother could keep her betting under control.
Thor was speedy and very good at soccer and baseball. I can still
see him sprinting—no, flying—around the bases, running out a long
hit. He was one of the stars of the Comrades, a team of Swedes (my
father also played) and Scotsmen that won the Michigan soccer
championship in the mid-1930s. He was also strong, even though he
was not big. He and I used to arm-wrestle from time to time, but I
could never get him down. His wrists were much too strong for me,
250
even after I got out of the Navy.
The last time I saw Thor was in 1967, when I was living in New
York and preparing for the bar exam. My brother-in-law, Roger,
called me to say that he was taking Thor to a ship that was headed
for Sweden. I went to see Thor in his cabin and say good-bye, which
was hard to do because I knew that I would never see him again. He
had incurable cancer and had decided to go back to Sweden to die.
He knew that he would have affordable medical care there, and he
would be with his other brothers and sisters.
* * *
Much of the Swedish we heard as children came from my mother.
My father hardly ever lapsed into Swedish, at least when we were
around. During his years in the West he had tried hard to "talk
American," and by the time I arrived on the scene he had no trace of
a Swedish accent. My mother went to night school in Dearborn and
learned English, too, but she always turned to Swedish when she had
to convey sentiments or intimacy, particularly when she was still new
to America.
Her first two years here must have been difficult. She had cut
herself off from everything she cherished—her home, family, friends,
and even her language. By the end of her first year she was already a
mother. Much of every day she was by herself, in a strange country
and with the responsibility of taking care of a little girl, and she was
terribly homesick. She had come from a large, very close and happy
family, with twelve brothers and sisters, most of whom lived in the
same area. She was without the kind of support that only her family
could give. She felt that she had to return home, so she left for
Sweden with Irene, my older sister.
I only discovered a few years ago, when I was going through
letters that my parents had exchanged while my mother was in Swe­den,
that she almost had to be talked into returning to the United
States. She was thinking seriously about staying and only came back
because of the urging of my father. Fortunately for her, there were a
few Swedes living close to us in Dearborn, and they helped her
tremendously. Among our other friendly neighbors were a number of
251
recent immigrants, and they also became a support group for her.
The women visited back and forth during the day, and by the time I
came along four years later, my mother felt pretty much at home
with English.
Whenever I came home from school for lunch, I would eat in
the kitchen while my mother ironed and listened to soap operas. Life
C a n Be B e a u t i f u l , S t e l l a D a l l a s , and Scattergood Baines and I were her
lunchtime companions. She enjoyed listening to the radio because it
helped her learn English. She followed her favorite soaps faithfully, in
addition to Tigers baseball games.
Even so, she continued to sprinkle her sentences with Swedish
words for commonplace things like parts of the body and everyday
items around the house. A handkerchief remained a näsduk, our
slippers were tofflor, my pillow was always a k u d d e , and her kitchen
had a spis and an is skåp (ice box) instead of a stove and refrigerator.
When she woke us she never said it was seven-thirty; she would
always say " K l o c k a n är h a l v åtta," and when she wanted us to wash
our hands she would ask us to "tvätta händarna." Whenever she
baked a cake or cooked anything sweet, she deliberately left a little
of the batter in the bowl or pan, because she knew that we wanted to
s l i c k a , or finish off what was left. I paid little or no attention to the
fact that so many words I heard were Swedish, because I never had
to translate them; they came to me as direct meanings.
There were also many Swedish words and expressions that had
special meaning for my mother—that really could not be translated
without losing some of their emotional overtones—and she contin­ued
to use them with us. It was natural for her to use snäll and f l i n k,
because she couldn't find words in English that she believed would
convey how she felt. K i n d and considerate come close to snäll, and
clever, a d r o i t , and n i m b l e come close to f l i n k , but they lose something.
Even if my mother could have found rough equivalents, she pre­ferred
words and expressions that had precise meaning for her. When
I misbehaved she never said that I'd been naughty, but that what I
had done was stygg; and she said "Tyst d u " when she wanted me to be
quiet and "akta dig" when she meant w a t c h o u t or be careful. And you
can be sure that when my parents said sweet nothings to each other,
they didn't use English.
252
* * *
Our family went back to Sweden on a visit in 1931, when I was
only three. One of my earliest memories is from that trip. It is midday
and I am in my crib, in a darkened room taking a nap. My mother
comes in to wake me and whispers, "Vi lämnar s n a r t " (We're leaving
soon). I remember having my hair cut in New York, across from the
Swedish-America Line's pier; when I looked out the window I could
see the smoke stacks of our ship above the roof of the pier. For years,
I thought that we had sailed from the top of a building.
I have no really clear memories of the ocean voyage except for
the colors of the sea: deep, deep green-blue stretching as far as the
eye could see. I only have dim recollections from our visit to Swe­den:
trying to walk on stilts and stopping in a dark railroad station
where my mother combed our hair. (I found out later that she was
looking for head lice.) We stayed in Sweden several weeks. Sur­rounded
by the new language, I quickly forgot what little English I
knew and began speaking only Swedish. We returned to the United
States by ship and then went by train from New York. My mother
said that the other passengers on the train were surprised and amused
by the fact that I spoke to my parents in Swedish, while they an­swered
me in English. Swedish stayed with me for only a few days
after we got back to Dearborn; I was annoyed when my best friend,
Jimmy Dickey, couldn't understand what I was saying, and he went
home to ask his parents why I could only speak Scotch.
Our bedtime was full of stories and instruction. My father made
up many of the stories, and most of them had a moral about proper
living: be honest, work hard, and tell the truth, and all will go well
with you. We also grew up with wild tales about mighty Thor and
Odin, and Viking heroes who chose to die in battle rather than in
bed so they could go to Valhalla. He quizzed us on things, like the
names of the Presidents and the capitals of the states, and we played
games with numbers, learning to add, subtract, and multiply. He
made the learning fun, and my sister and I competed against each
253
other. I don't remember that he ever got involved in our homework,
though. In fact, I don't remember any youngster saying that his or her
parents helped with schoolwork. Not that we had that much, until
high school. But my father wanted to prepare us as well as he could
for subjects we would be studying. By the time I was five years old, I
had already started reading on my own, after a fashion, and by the
first grade I knew how to multiply up to ten.
* * *
Another strong link with Sweden was the Vasa Club, an organi­zation
dedicated to maintaining Swedish traditions, fostering Swed­ish-
American ties, and nurturing a sense of Swedish community in
other countries. We youngsters didn't link Vasa Club with any such
lofty purposes; for us the Club was just a chance to have fun. We
went as a family to meetings and fundraisers (bingo and pot luck
suppers) at the Diamond Temple, a hall in Detroit. There the adults
chatted in Swedish, ate, and drank coffee, while we youngsters played
games and chased one another. In between playing, we had to re­hearse
the Swedish dances and songs that we were going to perform
at the annual Christmas party. I was never very enthusiastic about
Fig. 6. Vasa Children's Club F r a m t i d e n , 1 9 3 8.
254
Fig. 7. Irene, M a e , a n d the author, ready to per¬
form.
the rehearsals, but I did
like the party. It was a lot
like the Midsummer's Day
party at the lake. Children
were allowed to run around
upstairs, downstairs, out-side,
on and off the stage,
without supervision, and
we played tag and hide and
seek, and generally had a
loud, happy time. For the
party program, however,
we were on stage and
dressed in traditional Swed­ish
costumes—and very
well behaved.
After our program,
all the children lined up
to receive a little gift from
Santa, and that was fol­lowed
by a huge Christ­mas
buffet dinner. The wives and mothers served many of the tradi­tional
Swedish Christmas dishes and desserts that they had prepared,
and everything was delicious.
A high point of each summer was the Midsummer party that the
Vasa Club held at Middle Lake, near Lapeer. It was a fundraising
event hosted by the members of the club who had invested in lake
property there. We started driving to Lapeer early, taking along our
bathing suits, towels, and picnic things. A l l members of the Detroit
area Vasa Club were invited. During the day there were various
games, with prizes, for the youngsters, including a potato sack race,
three-legged race, etc. The adults played soccer and tossed horse­shoes.
For us children, everything at the Vasa Club picnic was a big
game. We ran around, mostly unsupervised, and played all day. As
dark came, we stayed close to the large pavilion located just up from
the beach. Benches lined three sides of the pavilion, with tables and
255
chairs set up for the evening activities. Wooden windows were opened
from the bottom and propped at a fully open position to let in fresh
air and light. The pavilion had a dance floor, band stand, and food
service counter where you could buy candy, soft drinks, homemade
ice cream, pancakes, hotdogs, popcorn, and other snacks, some of
them prepared by the wives. From time to time we would ask our
parents for change so we could sample goodies there.
Dancing started after dinner. The dance band, which consisted of
a piano, accordion, and violin, played polkas, schottisches, and tradi­tional
Swedish dances like the Hambo. The dance floor was slick and
smooth, with cornmeal sprinkled on it for easy dancing. We could
run and slide across the floor for yards. Adults who were not dancing
were doing their big-folks thing: talking with one another (in Swed­ish,
of course), exchanging stories, laughing, and joking. They didn't
bother about the children or try to discipline us, and we had a grand
time running all over, outside the pavilion, around the dance floor,
and between the people who were dancing. We even danced a little
ourselves. Finally, late at night, we collapsed and piled into our
Model A for an hour's drive back home.
* * *
Scandinavians love the sun, probably because they have to live
without it so much of the year. They also have a love affair with
coffee. A family get-together would be incomplete without a bot­tomless
urn of coffee and a tray of baked sweets. My sisters and I
drank coffee, diluted with milk, from the time we could sit at the
table with the adults. It is not surprising that coffee played a central
role in celebrating the winter solstice. Our family continued that
tradition. Early in the morning on Saint Lucia's Day, while it was still
dark outside, Mother would wake us. The lights would not be turned
on. She would carry candles for lighting (in Sweden, a crown of
lighted candles would be traditional) and would serve us coffee in
bed, and we would all lounge around in bed eating kaffebullar,
pepparkakor, butter-rich spritzar, and figure-eight cookies that looked
like cats with raisins for eyes (we called them Lussekats, Lucia cats).
It was a happy event, filled with great tastes. Some years, my mother
256
would arrange with a neighbor family, the Lundquists, to share the
Lucia party with them, and we would all arrive at their door in the
dark of the morning to wake their children for coffee and goodies.
* * *
Our Christmas Eve party was also a Swedish tradition, and a
major undertaking for my mother. During the Depression years we
were the only ones in our group of friends who could afford it,
because my father was the only one who had a steady job. My
mother would spend more than a week beforehand just gathering
and preparing food. First she went to specialty stores for Swedish
knäckebröd, ättiksill, meat for head cheese, etc. Then she began rinsing
out lutfisk, grinding up pork and beef for korv, and boiling meat to
prepare broth for dopp i gryta. Our kitchen was full of delicious aro­mas
when she baked sötlimpa and kaffebröd.
On the day before Christmas Eve we would buy our tree. This
was serious business, so all three children went along with Dad to
pick it out. We drove around to check the prices at the various
Christmas tree vendors and get the best buy. A t that point, bargain­ing
was effective, because vendors were anxious to clear their lots.
We always wound up with a nice long tree lashed to the top of our
car. Decoration began first thing in the morning on Christmas Eve.
My father would set up our tree in its holder, make sure it was
straight and steady, and then it was decorating time. We would get
out all of our Christmas tree things: boxes of colored balls to hang,
strings of lights with twisted cords, a supply of extra lights, and
packets of new tinsel (for whatever reason, we never saved the used
tinsel) and start in. A l l my father did with our tree was hang the
strings of lights and add the topmost ornament; otherwise he pretty
much left us children to finish the decoration. As the eldest, Irene
assumed that she was in charge and she ordered Mae and me around.
First we had to check the lights to make sure they were all working,
and replace the ones that were burned out. Irene was very meticu­lous
with her tinsel, and even smoothed some before hanging it. Mae
and I were more relaxed about the whole thing; after a few minutes
we started tossing the tinsel strands instead of hanging them.
257
Every Swedish friend or relative in the area was invited to our
party, and they all came, including, of course, The Boys and their
wives or girl friends. They usually brought small gifts for us children.
By mid-afternoon on Christmas Eve the house was full of adult talk
(mostly in Swedish) and laughter.
Our party seemed like a continuous feast, one course after an­other.
Almost all of the dishes were traditional Swedish: kotbullar med
l i n g o n m o s och nypotatis, ättiksill, sötlimpa (fantastic with cheese or pick­led
herring), b r u n a bönor, blodkaka (which I detested), lutfisk (which
has a never-to-be-forgotten slithery texture that takes some getting
used to, but is tolerable if the cream sauce is well done), hardtack
and cheese, pork sausage, sillsalat, and risgrönsgröt with cinnamon and
sugar and a good luck almond hidden for someone to find while
eating. The final course, a late night dessert, was nyponsuppe with a
glob of whipped cream on top, and a little cognac for the grownups.
The party went on until the late hours, and eventually we had to be
packed off to bed. The ultimate persuader was that if we weren't
quiet the whole family would have to go to church Christmas morn­ing
and nobody could open presents until we got home after church.
* * *
My parents came to America with only a few personal belong­ings
and enough money to satisfy immigration authorities. They knew
absolutely no English. They came with dreams, and for their children
they dreamed of a future that would be limited only by our talents
and desires. In the process of our growing up, they passed on to us
their pride in Sweden and the richness of their homeland's traditions,
and a whole host of wonderful memories and habits that continue to
influence us.

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Growing Up Swedish
ERIC V. YOUNGQUIST
Except for the accident of geography, being born in America, I
was as Swedish as you could get. Both my parents were descen­dants
of families with many generations of nothing but Swedes,
and they were already adults when they arrived in this country. M y
last name shouted out Swedish, and the middle name I used until I
started college, Vikar, would also have been recognizable as Scandi­navian
if people had pronounced it the Swedish way (i.e., rhyming
with S e a C a r , with a little trill to the r) instead of making it rhyme
with biker or sicker! The only thing that name had going for it was
that it was unusual enough that people seemed to remember it.
I came into this world with a full dose of Swedish genes. In
among those genes there must be one that dictates how Swedes
behave. They tend to obey society's rules, and expect everyone else
to do the same. They have a reserve (more noticeable in the cities)
that makes them appear rigid and aloof, because for centuries they
have been taught not to show feelings to strangers. In that narrow
sense they are quintessential stoics. Swedes may not make friends
quickly, but once you have one for a friend, he or she is a true one;
they may be a tad crusty on the outside, but once you become their
friend you experience the mushy, sentimental inside. That's why they
are careful about offering friendship: they believe that it has to be
genuine on both sides. Swedes also tend to be formal, with the
"right" way to do things like propose a toast, for example.
My parents came to this country for the oldest of reasons: America
ERIC V. YOUNGQUIST has studied in and about Scandinavia, worked for the
Department of State, taught, practiced law in several settings, and served as a VISTA
volunteer. Today he is retired and lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where he is completing
a series of stories about his childhood. He also compiled, edited, and published his
father's immigrant reminiscences in America Fever: A Swede in the West, 1914-
1923 (Nashville, 1 9 8 8 ).
237
was the land of opportu­nity.
Swedish society in the
early years of the twenti­eth
century was still rigid
and class-bound; descen­dants
of the old noble fami­lies
still ruled. Even their
surnames, which were reg­istered
and reeked of in­herited
wealth and power,
set them apart. Farmers
and ordinary workers, for
the most part, had no sur­names
until the wave of de­mocracy
reached Scan­dinavia
in the late nine­teenth
century. For centu­ries
they had had to use
the patronymic system. So,
for example, if Bengt had
a son U l f and a daughter
Ingrid, the son would be called U l f Bengtsson and the daughter
Ingrid Bengtsdotter. Everyone knew who the important people were;
their very names proclaimed their status and their titles reinforced it.
Titles were important until well after World War II. When I traveled
to Gothenburg to visit my aunt in 1952, I had trouble finding her
husband's name in the phone book. The Johanssons were not listed
alphabetically by first names, but by titles, or occupations.
My father told us that he was about five years old when his family
chose its surname, and he remembered when the discussion took
place. The family decided to take its name from the name of the
family farm, which was Ljungagård (Heather Acres). They chose a
variant, however, Ljungkvist, or Heather-twig. Otherwise his name
would have been Erick Klausson, because his father was named Klaus
August Svensson. My father Americanized the spelling of his sur­name
when he became a citizen.
Attracted by the lure of the old West, my father left for America
Fig. 1. T h e author in HIS c h i l d h o o d — a stereotypi­cal
tow-headed, blue-eyed S w e d i s h - A m e r i c a n kid.
238
in 1914 to find out what it was like to be a cowboy, and he decided
to stay here because in this country he felt freed from chains of the
past. He didn't have to be classified by what his parents were; he
discovered he could carve his own future. He learned the skills
necessary to hold his own with other "cowpunchers" through a series
of jobs on ranches in Nebraska, Wyoming, Oregon, and Idaho. Then
he enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War I. He was accepted
even though he was not a citizen and was assigned to the noncomba¬
tant Engineer Corps. He served in France and was stationed near the
front lines most of the time, helping to gather timber for trenches and
shelters. Near the end of the war, during the 1918 influenza pan­demic,
he fell i l l and was unable to return to the United States until
the following year.
After the war, he and Cecil Fallon, one of his Army buddies,
decided to head west together and scout around for good home-steading
land. After traveling all through the eastern half of Oregon
and finding nothing with sufficient water, they turned their efforts
toward Montana. In the fall of 1919 they finally staked squatter
claims in southwest Mon­tana,
not far from
Yellowstone Park. About
this time, he also decided
that he would get nowhere
in America without more
education. Since he had
nothing but free time at
least seven months a year,
he wanted to spend that
time reading and learning
as much as he could. He
went to the teachers col­lege
in Dillon and asked the
head librarian what books
he should read to make up
for his lack of formal edu­cation.
Impressed by his
F i g . 2 . M y father in his homesteading days. desire to learn, she made
239
up a list of textbooks that would
help him. He read history (Ameri­can,
Roman, English, Egyptian), ge­ology,
chemistry, physics, as­tronomy,
mathematics, and phi­losophy.
One of the local stores had
used textbooks, and for twenty
dollars my father bought everything
he needed, including a dictionary.
He would read for a few hours, he
told me, and then have to get some
exercise, so he would take a fif­teen-
or twenty-minute break to
run around his cabin, jumping into
the air and yelling. After staying
on his claim and "proving up" on
it for the required three years when
the area was officially opened to
homesteading, my father ended up
with 640 acres of his own.
My mother, already linked
with my father through the mar­riage
of her oldest sister to my father's older brother, came to America
partly for love and partly to escape her own chains. She often told us
that the saddest day of her life was when she was told that she had to
go to work as a mother's helper and could not return to school. She
was only eleven at the time.
My parents' romance had a long gestation period. He was smit­ten
by her early, and often told us how cute she was and how fast she
could run as a youngster. In Sweden he had watched her play games
like Capture the Flag. The photo in figure 3 shows how he remem­bered
her during the years they were apart. Mother would not have
been much more than fourteen when my father left Sweden, so when
he went home in 1923 and proposed to her, they had not seen one
another for about nine years and she had blossomed into a beautiful
woman. They became engaged just before he returned to the United
States.
Fig. 3. T h e earliest picture we have of
my m o t h e r . She was sixteen when this
was t a k e n . It is probably the one my
father carried and fell i n love with.
240
Mother's first big decision about marriage, other than agreeing to
wed, had a lasting effect for our family. When she and my father
discussed where they ought to live in America, she quickly put an
end to any idea he might have had about living on his homestead in
Montana. No "cabin in the mountains" for her, without another
woman around for miles and nothing but work. She had heard enough
about pioneer women from my father to realize that kind of life
would be no liberation for her. She was tired of facing a future with
nothing but work, and no hope. There was nothing attractive about
scenery without security; she wanted to settle down and build a life.
My father told her that living and economic conditions were
improving most rapidly in California and Michigan, so they tried to
decide which state would be better. Michigan won out. My father
headed for Dearborn, home of Henry Ford and the huge River Rouge
plant. When he arrived in Dearborn to start building a life for his
future wife and himself, he had no idea how he was going to support
the two of them, let alone a family. He had only worked on ranches
and his own homestead, and he had never seen the inside of a
factory. None of this discouraged him, however. He started out by
applying for work at Ford's. [Living in Dearborn in my day was living
with Ford's. For us, Ford's was a generic, all-encompassing term that
stood for Henry Ford's company and everything connected with it.
People didn't work for the Ford Motor Company; they worked at
Ford's.] He stood in a line outside the company's employment office,
and when his turn came he handed his application to the employ­ment
clerk at the counter, who looked it over carefully. From the
application the clerk could see that my father was a veteran, and
from my father's appearance he could see that my father was strong
and looked eager to work.
He looked down at the application and asked my father, "Had
any experience with machines?"
My father figured that yes would be the right answer, and said it
without waiting.
The clerk looked up, his pen raised. "What kind of machines?"
My father's heart skipped a beat. T r a p p e d . He had to come up
with an answer, so he did. It was not the one the examiner expected.
"Mowing machines."
241
With a laugh, the man
said, "Okay, you're hired."
My father began regu­lar
shift work at the giant
plant, but he had visions
of a better future, so he
kept his eyes open for other
opportunities, too. When
he learned that the city
police department was ex­panding
and looking for
patrolmen, he went to the
police station to ask for
more information. He met
and spoke with Joseph
Shaefer, the police chief,
who encouraged him to
put in an application.
When it was accepted in
mid-year 1924, my father
became a uniformed patrol­man
and started on his
twenty-year career in law enforcement.
As soon as he had his first job, my father bought a lot and began
building a home for his intended. He had built sheds in the Army
and his cabin when he lived in Montana, but a home in Dearborn
was a new departure. Lack of experience didn't deter him, however.
He knew enough to measure carefully before sawing and to keep
everything level and plumb. A home was being built across the street
from him, so he watched and learned. He told us that after the
workmen left in the afternoon, he would amble over and take mea­surements
of things he was working on, e.g., the rough openings for
windows and doors.
When their new home was ready and furnished (he bought furni­ture
"on time'"), he sent Mother a telegram saying, in effect, "Come
on over"—which she did. She arrived by ship in early January 1924,
together with her brother, Gunnar. She came to America with prac-
F i g . 4 . Father as a p a t r o l m a n .
242
tically nothing except her clothing and some personal things like bits
of copperware. No large, handmade trousseau trunk, and precious
little of Sweden except memories. They were married immediately
and moved into their new house.
In addition to myself, the family included my two sisters, Irene
and Mae. Irene was born eleven months after my parents were mar­ried.
I came along four years later, and it took another four years
before Mae arrived. In our view, it was as if the three of us were in
different generations. Because they were girls as well, our friends, our
games, and our interests were completely different. I know that when
I was around Irene, she considered me a pest, and I resented that she
considered herself my boss. When Mae was around me she enjoyed
pestering me, and she probably felt that she was being bossed by
everyone.
My parents felt at home in Dearborn because it was a melting
pot. They were literally surrounded by other immigrants. Just in the
half-block where we lived there were families whose parents had
come from Scotland, Poland, Germany, England, Sweden, Ireland,
Finland, and Italy. My stories could have been repeated by many of
my friends. Though their experiences might have been greatly differ­ent
from mine, I believe a lot of what I have written would resonate
with them. My Swedish heritage lent a special flavor to my youth,
but my friend Johnny Golles could have written the same thing
about G r o w i n g U p Italian. He probably felt as close to his parents'
language and traditions as I did—maybe even closer. When a young
Italian boy joined our second-grade class, the teacher had him sit
next to Johnny because she knew that Johnny would help h im through
the difficulties of getting adjusted to school and to a new language.
* * *
Swedish food was an integral part of my growing-up years, par­ticularly
the different kinds of coffee bread, cinnamon rolls, cookies,
and other baked goods that went so well with coffee. For our family,
however, no single food reminded us of Sweden so much as s v e n s ka
p a n k a k o r — t h e light, egg-rich, sweet pancakes that our mother could
make so well. Regular pancakes simply didn't give us anything like
243
the satisfaction that hers did.
Swedish pancakes were part of many happy family memories.
Almost any weekend when the weather was nice we might drive to
River Rouge Park for a morning picnic. We took our picnic basket
and supplies out of the car, found a picnic table in a wooded area
and organized everything while Dad built a cooking fire in the nearby
grill. Then we kids would run around in the woods. Mother's batter
was already prepared, so it was not long before she would call us to
the table and the pancakes would begin arriving, one every couple
minutes—even faster if she was using two skillets. Usually we poured
maple syrup on our pancakes unless Mother had made pear syrup,
which was absolutely the best topping. Any kind of jam or jelly also
worked if we had nothing else.
During my first semesters at [the University of] Michigan, my
parents sometimes drove over to A n n Arbor on a Saturday to see
me. Knowing that I was probably going through pancake withdrawal,
they usually brought along a stack of pancakes that Mother had
made, kept warm in a deep skillet wrapped in a heavy towel and
several layers of newspapers. We would find a quiet place to park
and then sit there together in the car, talking and enjoying our
morning treat.
Mother had no recipe for pancakes; she never measured ingredi­ents.
She just broke one egg for each person into a bowl, poured in
the right amount of milk, beat them together with her visp (a bundle
of birch twigs, I think), then added some sugar, flour, and a little salt.
She relied wholly on color and texture; she knew intuitively when
the batter was right. Since she did not work from a recipe, she could
not tell her daughters or my wife how to make pancakes like hers.
Eventually my wife arranged to be with her while she prepared the
batter. Rita weighed carefully every ingredient that my mother put in
and wrote down the list together with a description of the entire
process. That ensured the continuity of the Youngquist Swedish pan­cake
tradition.
When my mother came to America she did bring along a recipe
box from her father, but aside from her Swedish specialties, cooking
was a continuing adventure—for her as well as us. In America she
was confronted by a bewildering variety of foods and ingredients that
244
were unfamiliar to her, so her early cooking years were a time of
experimentation, trial, and error. She took a cooking class that came
free along with her new stove, picked up new recipes from other
women in the neighborhood, of course, and clipped some from food
containers.
There were times when we children felt like guinea pigs for new
dishes. Stuffed green peppers were a memorable flop. Mother used a
salty concoction for filling that was mostly ham, I believe, but cer­tainly
not the usual ground beef and rice. Whatever it was, I hated
the taste and couldn't finish mine, so the half-opened pepper sat
there on my plate staring at me. My younger sister, Mae, obviously
felt the same. My father—without even tasting the pepper—decreed
that personal preferences were irrelevant; we had been served and we
could not leave the table until we had finished. He didn't rely on any
"starving children in China" reasoning. His approach was direct and
unequivocal: Eat it. Mother took pity on us, though, and after my
father had gone upstairs she quietly said that if we took one more
bite it was O K for us to leave.
Mother prepared other trial dishes that I had troubles with, nota­bly
creamed Swiss chard, mashed rutabaga, and rhubarb (in any
form). My father loved them all, so they showed up fairly often on
our table. I gagged on them, though, and had to devise ways of
avoiding them, or at least limiting my losses. I would take my plate
and try to fill it with other food, but rarely managed to escape
without having a serving of the loathsome stuff added. The next line
of defense was to plead that I was not really hungry and wanted only
a little bit. That sometimes worked. If all else failed and I wound up
with some of the dreaded food on my plate, I tried to cover it with
other things, like peelings from new potatoes or a half-slice of bread.
When I did take a bite, it would be small. The final defense was
delay. If I could wait out everyone, I might be able to toss the
uneaten stuff in the garbage while my mother was washing dishes.
Overall, I would say that—using a major-league batting average for
comparison—I batted about .250 (i.e., not great) on rutabaga, rhu­barb,
and Swiss chard avoidance.
We played a lot of games to entertain ourselves, and my mother
and Uncle Thor particularly enjoyed card games. When we got to-
245
gether with other Swedes the adults sometimes played Priffe, or Swedish
whist; these games were always accompanied by spirited conversa­tion
in Swedish. The other game we all enjoyed was pinochle—not
two-deck or four-deck, just single-deck, without frills. The only con­cession
we made to silliness was crazy pinochle, where the side that
won the bid could exchange three cards before play began. When
my parents went to visit Swedish friends, we generally visited as a
family; after dinner the adults conversed in Swedish and played cards
while we children were left to amuse ourselves.
* * *
My parents would have been surprised if they had heard me say
that I grew up Swedish. They took great pains to become complete
Americans. They worked hard to learn English and adapt to Ameri­can
ways. A t the same time, however, their mother tongue, their
traditions, their families, and many of their friends were Swedish, so it
is not surprising that we children were acutely aware of our Swedish
roots. We also had constant reminders of Sweden, such as special
foods and holidays, letters and cards from relatives in Sweden, con­tact
with The Boys, activities at the Vasa Club, and of course the
language itself.
THE BOYS
"The Boys" were one of our important links with Sweden. They
were all young Swedes who were out of work and needed a place to
stay. One half of our garage was for parking our Model A and the
other half was made into a large room. This is where The Boys lived.
In retrospect, their room must have been a lot like a ranch bunk-house:
four beds against the walls, a stove, and one dresser against
the wall opposite the outer door. There wasn't much insulation in the
walls, so the room must have been really chilly during winter nights.
There might have been three or four rooming in our garage at
any one time. I wasn't old enough to be curious about what they did
or how they lived. To me, The Boys were just part of our family, in a
way.
246
They were there in the garage, and they came and they went.
Work was hard to find during the Depression, so they worked when
they could find jobs, sometimes at Ford, but usually in general con­struction
or painting homes or buildings. This was before rollers put
most professional painters pretty much out of business. They were a
fun-loving lot, and I must have heard a lot of Swedish—generally
swear words—from them. They'd all come over from Sweden, and
most were relatives. In addition to those pictured below, there were
Carl and Arvid, my father's brothers (they had left before I was
born); and Sven and Helge, who were distant cousins. Two others,
Clas and Algot, were just young Swedes who were friends of the
other Boys. Carl and Gunnar eventually returned to Sweden and
Arvid settled in Nebraska, but the others stayed on.
Even after The Boys married and had homes of their own, they
F i g . 5. Family gathering. Three of T h e Boys are i n the back r o w . T h e shorter ones,
G u n n a r ( L ) a n d T h o r ( R ) , are m y mother's brothers; the tall one is O s c a r , my double
c o u s i n — h i s parents were my mother's oldest sister a n d m y father's older brother. I n the
front r o w are E r i c (the a u t h o r ) , M o m , her father, Irene, a n d D a d .
247
still felt like part of our family, and they were regular guests at our
Christmas Eve parties.
The most colorful character among The Boys was Helge. He was
a loud, bluff person, not reserved and quiet like the others. He was
also volatile, which was unusual for a Swede, and could easily ex­plode
in bursts of profanity. He left me with two indelible memories.
One day I must have stretched his patience to the breaking point by
asking for some of what he was drinking, because he took his bottle
of beer and poured it over my head. That had a lasting effect all
right, because from that day forward I disliked the taste—and even
the smell—of beer.
The second Helge incident involved the dog that our renters
upstairs kept, a Spitz with a high-pitched bark that grated on everyone's
nerves, particularly Helge's. He disliked den jävla h u n d (that damned
dog) with a passion. One day he was backing out our driveway and
didn't know that the Spitz was on the front porch waiting for him, or
that when he passed the porch his head would be less than two feet
away from where the dog was standing. He stuck his head out the car
window, looked down the driveway and started backing up. As he
passed the porch, the Spitz put its head through the railing and let
out a series of loud yips right in Helge's ear. The entire neighborhood
must have heard Helge explode with an epic stream of Swedish
swearwords. The incident became part of our family lore.
Uncle Thor (we called him Tore, pronounced too-reh) was my
mother's younger brother. Always easy-going and nonjudgmental,
with a hint of a smile on his face, he was a favorite with children,
particularly my sisters and me and our own children, probably be­cause
he was like a kindly grandparent. He rarely contradicted any­one,
and would venture an opinion on a matter only if asked. If he
disagreed with what a person said, he would nod silently as if think­ing
about it, and maybe say something like "Ja, I can see that." He
also had an uncanny rapport with animals. When our cocker spaniel,
Sniffles, was old and almost blind, she would stay with him as much
as she could. She would lie down by his feet or crawl into bed with
him. If he went outside, she would sniff around his room to find a
piece of his clothing and stretch out on it. One day when I passed by
her, she was in a chair, lying on top of Thor's knitted cap. She eyed
248
me suspiciously as I came near. When I reached out to pet her, she
growled and rippled her lips at me as if to say, Don't y o u e v e n think of
t o u c h i n g this cap!
One day when we lived in Dixboro my mother looked out the
window and saw Thor walking away from our barn out into the field.
Strung out behind him, like the kids who followed the Pied Piper,
were our horse Molly, our cow Bangs, two pigs that had escaped their
pen, and Sniffles. When Thor stopped to read or lie down, the
animals would stay near him, keeping him company.
I probably had more contact with Thor than my sisters did,
because I was interested in baseball and he liked to watch the Detroit
Tigers play. We would ride a streetcar to Navin Field and generally
sit in the grandstand close to third base. I liked that section because
I always hoped to catch a foul ball (which I never did), and I could
also walk over to stand in the aisle where I was right behind home
plate and could get a batter's view of incoming pitches.
Thor was a regular player in our family pinochle games. When he
lived with my folks, the three of them often played three-handed
cut-throat. Whenever I was home, the four of us played partners or
four-handed cut-throat. I believe that card sense ran in my mother's
family, because Thor and Mother were always tough to beat. You
always wanted one of them for your partner. Dad was more easy­going
about cards and never quite as sharp as those two. When they
began spending winters near Clearwater, Florida, I stopped in for a
few days on business trips. We would play marathon sessions of cut­throat
pinochle.
Thor was a journeyman painter. He kept painting even after
rollers were introduced. The low point came when he realized that
he was the only painter working for his company, and he alone was
supporting an office staff of three people. That was when he decided
to quit painting as a regular job. From then on he only did contract
painting: people or businesses who were familiar with his work would
call to ask him to do special jobs.
He was a part of our household and lived with my parents for
many years. In Dearborn he lived with us fairly regularly, usually in
the garage, until World War II, except for a time when he hitch­hiked
or bummed his way west and stayed there for about a year. As
249
the months passed with no word from him, the whole family grew
concerned. Then one day he suddenly appeared, without notice and
without much explanation of where he had been or what he had
done. That was Uncle Thor, a free spirit and a kind of loner.
On our farm in Dixboro, Thor had his own room. When we sold
the house at the farm, along with part of the acreage, my parents
built a smaller one in the corner of the land they kept. While they
were staying there during the spring and summer, he lived in one of
the outbuildings. He helped with clean-up and did a lot of gardening
and other outside work. As I said, he was family and a constant
presence.
Thor was an inveterate gambler and would bet on almost any­thing.
A n d he rarely lost. Whenever he and I bet on which of two
teams would win, he would tell me to take my pick. We never bet
much—just enough so the winner could gloat a bit. Other memories:
doing crossword puzzles with him, going to buy a carton of cigarettes
for him, and the fact that he never learned—or wanted to learn—
how to drive.
Thor followed the horses, and that led to gambling by my par­ents—
not a good result, even though they enjoyed the camaraderie
of going to the track. Neither of them had showed any interest in
gambling while we were young. Going to the race track would have
been unthinkable while my father was in the Police Department. It
was not until after he took early retirement in 1944 that they started
following the horses. My theory about why my father thought he
could win by betting on horse racing is this: he figured that he knew
horses, based on his years as a cowhand, and that, therefore, he could
"beat the system." The problem was that his arrogance, if I can call it
that, led him to bet more than he could afford to lose, while my
mother could keep her betting under control.
Thor was speedy and very good at soccer and baseball. I can still
see him sprinting—no, flying—around the bases, running out a long
hit. He was one of the stars of the Comrades, a team of Swedes (my
father also played) and Scotsmen that won the Michigan soccer
championship in the mid-1930s. He was also strong, even though he
was not big. He and I used to arm-wrestle from time to time, but I
could never get him down. His wrists were much too strong for me,
250
even after I got out of the Navy.
The last time I saw Thor was in 1967, when I was living in New
York and preparing for the bar exam. My brother-in-law, Roger,
called me to say that he was taking Thor to a ship that was headed
for Sweden. I went to see Thor in his cabin and say good-bye, which
was hard to do because I knew that I would never see him again. He
had incurable cancer and had decided to go back to Sweden to die.
He knew that he would have affordable medical care there, and he
would be with his other brothers and sisters.
* * *
Much of the Swedish we heard as children came from my mother.
My father hardly ever lapsed into Swedish, at least when we were
around. During his years in the West he had tried hard to "talk
American," and by the time I arrived on the scene he had no trace of
a Swedish accent. My mother went to night school in Dearborn and
learned English, too, but she always turned to Swedish when she had
to convey sentiments or intimacy, particularly when she was still new
to America.
Her first two years here must have been difficult. She had cut
herself off from everything she cherished—her home, family, friends,
and even her language. By the end of her first year she was already a
mother. Much of every day she was by herself, in a strange country
and with the responsibility of taking care of a little girl, and she was
terribly homesick. She had come from a large, very close and happy
family, with twelve brothers and sisters, most of whom lived in the
same area. She was without the kind of support that only her family
could give. She felt that she had to return home, so she left for
Sweden with Irene, my older sister.
I only discovered a few years ago, when I was going through
letters that my parents had exchanged while my mother was in Swe­den,
that she almost had to be talked into returning to the United
States. She was thinking seriously about staying and only came back
because of the urging of my father. Fortunately for her, there were a
few Swedes living close to us in Dearborn, and they helped her
tremendously. Among our other friendly neighbors were a number of
251
recent immigrants, and they also became a support group for her.
The women visited back and forth during the day, and by the time I
came along four years later, my mother felt pretty much at home
with English.
Whenever I came home from school for lunch, I would eat in
the kitchen while my mother ironed and listened to soap operas. Life
C a n Be B e a u t i f u l , S t e l l a D a l l a s , and Scattergood Baines and I were her
lunchtime companions. She enjoyed listening to the radio because it
helped her learn English. She followed her favorite soaps faithfully, in
addition to Tigers baseball games.
Even so, she continued to sprinkle her sentences with Swedish
words for commonplace things like parts of the body and everyday
items around the house. A handkerchief remained a näsduk, our
slippers were tofflor, my pillow was always a k u d d e , and her kitchen
had a spis and an is skåp (ice box) instead of a stove and refrigerator.
When she woke us she never said it was seven-thirty; she would
always say " K l o c k a n är h a l v åtta," and when she wanted us to wash
our hands she would ask us to "tvätta händarna." Whenever she
baked a cake or cooked anything sweet, she deliberately left a little
of the batter in the bowl or pan, because she knew that we wanted to
s l i c k a , or finish off what was left. I paid little or no attention to the
fact that so many words I heard were Swedish, because I never had
to translate them; they came to me as direct meanings.
There were also many Swedish words and expressions that had
special meaning for my mother—that really could not be translated
without losing some of their emotional overtones—and she contin­ued
to use them with us. It was natural for her to use snäll and f l i n k,
because she couldn't find words in English that she believed would
convey how she felt. K i n d and considerate come close to snäll, and
clever, a d r o i t , and n i m b l e come close to f l i n k , but they lose something.
Even if my mother could have found rough equivalents, she pre­ferred
words and expressions that had precise meaning for her. When
I misbehaved she never said that I'd been naughty, but that what I
had done was stygg; and she said "Tyst d u " when she wanted me to be
quiet and "akta dig" when she meant w a t c h o u t or be careful. And you
can be sure that when my parents said sweet nothings to each other,
they didn't use English.
252
* * *
Our family went back to Sweden on a visit in 1931, when I was
only three. One of my earliest memories is from that trip. It is midday
and I am in my crib, in a darkened room taking a nap. My mother
comes in to wake me and whispers, "Vi lämnar s n a r t " (We're leaving
soon). I remember having my hair cut in New York, across from the
Swedish-America Line's pier; when I looked out the window I could
see the smoke stacks of our ship above the roof of the pier. For years,
I thought that we had sailed from the top of a building.
I have no really clear memories of the ocean voyage except for
the colors of the sea: deep, deep green-blue stretching as far as the
eye could see. I only have dim recollections from our visit to Swe­den:
trying to walk on stilts and stopping in a dark railroad station
where my mother combed our hair. (I found out later that she was
looking for head lice.) We stayed in Sweden several weeks. Sur­rounded
by the new language, I quickly forgot what little English I
knew and began speaking only Swedish. We returned to the United
States by ship and then went by train from New York. My mother
said that the other passengers on the train were surprised and amused
by the fact that I spoke to my parents in Swedish, while they an­swered
me in English. Swedish stayed with me for only a few days
after we got back to Dearborn; I was annoyed when my best friend,
Jimmy Dickey, couldn't understand what I was saying, and he went
home to ask his parents why I could only speak Scotch.
Our bedtime was full of stories and instruction. My father made
up many of the stories, and most of them had a moral about proper
living: be honest, work hard, and tell the truth, and all will go well
with you. We also grew up with wild tales about mighty Thor and
Odin, and Viking heroes who chose to die in battle rather than in
bed so they could go to Valhalla. He quizzed us on things, like the
names of the Presidents and the capitals of the states, and we played
games with numbers, learning to add, subtract, and multiply. He
made the learning fun, and my sister and I competed against each
253
other. I don't remember that he ever got involved in our homework,
though. In fact, I don't remember any youngster saying that his or her
parents helped with schoolwork. Not that we had that much, until
high school. But my father wanted to prepare us as well as he could
for subjects we would be studying. By the time I was five years old, I
had already started reading on my own, after a fashion, and by the
first grade I knew how to multiply up to ten.
* * *
Another strong link with Sweden was the Vasa Club, an organi­zation
dedicated to maintaining Swedish traditions, fostering Swed­ish-
American ties, and nurturing a sense of Swedish community in
other countries. We youngsters didn't link Vasa Club with any such
lofty purposes; for us the Club was just a chance to have fun. We
went as a family to meetings and fundraisers (bingo and pot luck
suppers) at the Diamond Temple, a hall in Detroit. There the adults
chatted in Swedish, ate, and drank coffee, while we youngsters played
games and chased one another. In between playing, we had to re­hearse
the Swedish dances and songs that we were going to perform
at the annual Christmas party. I was never very enthusiastic about
Fig. 6. Vasa Children's Club F r a m t i d e n , 1 9 3 8.
254
Fig. 7. Irene, M a e , a n d the author, ready to per¬
form.
the rehearsals, but I did
like the party. It was a lot
like the Midsummer's Day
party at the lake. Children
were allowed to run around
upstairs, downstairs, out-side,
on and off the stage,
without supervision, and
we played tag and hide and
seek, and generally had a
loud, happy time. For the
party program, however,
we were on stage and
dressed in traditional Swed­ish
costumes—and very
well behaved.
After our program,
all the children lined up
to receive a little gift from
Santa, and that was fol­lowed
by a huge Christ­mas
buffet dinner. The wives and mothers served many of the tradi­tional
Swedish Christmas dishes and desserts that they had prepared,
and everything was delicious.
A high point of each summer was the Midsummer party that the
Vasa Club held at Middle Lake, near Lapeer. It was a fundraising
event hosted by the members of the club who had invested in lake
property there. We started driving to Lapeer early, taking along our
bathing suits, towels, and picnic things. A l l members of the Detroit
area Vasa Club were invited. During the day there were various
games, with prizes, for the youngsters, including a potato sack race,
three-legged race, etc. The adults played soccer and tossed horse­shoes.
For us children, everything at the Vasa Club picnic was a big
game. We ran around, mostly unsupervised, and played all day. As
dark came, we stayed close to the large pavilion located just up from
the beach. Benches lined three sides of the pavilion, with tables and
255
chairs set up for the evening activities. Wooden windows were opened
from the bottom and propped at a fully open position to let in fresh
air and light. The pavilion had a dance floor, band stand, and food
service counter where you could buy candy, soft drinks, homemade
ice cream, pancakes, hotdogs, popcorn, and other snacks, some of
them prepared by the wives. From time to time we would ask our
parents for change so we could sample goodies there.
Dancing started after dinner. The dance band, which consisted of
a piano, accordion, and violin, played polkas, schottisches, and tradi­tional
Swedish dances like the Hambo. The dance floor was slick and
smooth, with cornmeal sprinkled on it for easy dancing. We could
run and slide across the floor for yards. Adults who were not dancing
were doing their big-folks thing: talking with one another (in Swed­ish,
of course), exchanging stories, laughing, and joking. They didn't
bother about the children or try to discipline us, and we had a grand
time running all over, outside the pavilion, around the dance floor,
and between the people who were dancing. We even danced a little
ourselves. Finally, late at night, we collapsed and piled into our
Model A for an hour's drive back home.
* * *
Scandinavians love the sun, probably because they have to live
without it so much of the year. They also have a love affair with
coffee. A family get-together would be incomplete without a bot­tomless
urn of coffee and a tray of baked sweets. My sisters and I
drank coffee, diluted with milk, from the time we could sit at the
table with the adults. It is not surprising that coffee played a central
role in celebrating the winter solstice. Our family continued that
tradition. Early in the morning on Saint Lucia's Day, while it was still
dark outside, Mother would wake us. The lights would not be turned
on. She would carry candles for lighting (in Sweden, a crown of
lighted candles would be traditional) and would serve us coffee in
bed, and we would all lounge around in bed eating kaffebullar,
pepparkakor, butter-rich spritzar, and figure-eight cookies that looked
like cats with raisins for eyes (we called them Lussekats, Lucia cats).
It was a happy event, filled with great tastes. Some years, my mother
256
would arrange with a neighbor family, the Lundquists, to share the
Lucia party with them, and we would all arrive at their door in the
dark of the morning to wake their children for coffee and goodies.
* * *
Our Christmas Eve party was also a Swedish tradition, and a
major undertaking for my mother. During the Depression years we
were the only ones in our group of friends who could afford it,
because my father was the only one who had a steady job. My
mother would spend more than a week beforehand just gathering
and preparing food. First she went to specialty stores for Swedish
knäckebröd, ättiksill, meat for head cheese, etc. Then she began rinsing
out lutfisk, grinding up pork and beef for korv, and boiling meat to
prepare broth for dopp i gryta. Our kitchen was full of delicious aro­mas
when she baked sötlimpa and kaffebröd.
On the day before Christmas Eve we would buy our tree. This
was serious business, so all three children went along with Dad to
pick it out. We drove around to check the prices at the various
Christmas tree vendors and get the best buy. A t that point, bargain­ing
was effective, because vendors were anxious to clear their lots.
We always wound up with a nice long tree lashed to the top of our
car. Decoration began first thing in the morning on Christmas Eve.
My father would set up our tree in its holder, make sure it was
straight and steady, and then it was decorating time. We would get
out all of our Christmas tree things: boxes of colored balls to hang,
strings of lights with twisted cords, a supply of extra lights, and
packets of new tinsel (for whatever reason, we never saved the used
tinsel) and start in. A l l my father did with our tree was hang the
strings of lights and add the topmost ornament; otherwise he pretty
much left us children to finish the decoration. As the eldest, Irene
assumed that she was in charge and she ordered Mae and me around.
First we had to check the lights to make sure they were all working,
and replace the ones that were burned out. Irene was very meticu­lous
with her tinsel, and even smoothed some before hanging it. Mae
and I were more relaxed about the whole thing; after a few minutes
we started tossing the tinsel strands instead of hanging them.
257
Every Swedish friend or relative in the area was invited to our
party, and they all came, including, of course, The Boys and their
wives or girl friends. They usually brought small gifts for us children.
By mid-afternoon on Christmas Eve the house was full of adult talk
(mostly in Swedish) and laughter.
Our party seemed like a continuous feast, one course after an­other.
Almost all of the dishes were traditional Swedish: kotbullar med
l i n g o n m o s och nypotatis, ättiksill, sötlimpa (fantastic with cheese or pick­led
herring), b r u n a bönor, blodkaka (which I detested), lutfisk (which
has a never-to-be-forgotten slithery texture that takes some getting
used to, but is tolerable if the cream sauce is well done), hardtack
and cheese, pork sausage, sillsalat, and risgrönsgröt with cinnamon and
sugar and a good luck almond hidden for someone to find while
eating. The final course, a late night dessert, was nyponsuppe with a
glob of whipped cream on top, and a little cognac for the grownups.
The party went on until the late hours, and eventually we had to be
packed off to bed. The ultimate persuader was that if we weren't
quiet the whole family would have to go to church Christmas morn­ing
and nobody could open presents until we got home after church.
* * *
My parents came to America with only a few personal belong­ings
and enough money to satisfy immigration authorities. They knew
absolutely no English. They came with dreams, and for their children
they dreamed of a future that would be limited only by our talents
and desires. In the process of our growing up, they passed on to us
their pride in Sweden and the richness of their homeland's traditions,
and a whole host of wonderful memories and habits that continue to
influence us.